Kyle’s Journey in Armenia

Armenia’s New Year holiday (“Nor Tari”) has finally passed, and it can best be described as a dolma-filled, house-crawling, insomnia-enducing holiday adventure of epic proportions. Today is the 18th – I am still exhausted 🙂 The official Nor Tari holiday ran from Jan 1st until Christmas Day on Jan 6th. However, unofficially, the partying continued until the old New Year on January 13th. I guess there’s no way to explain it but to start from the beginning:

New Years Eve – I’ll be honest, New Years Eve here is not fun and completely anti-climatic compared to America’s. The biggest event of New Years Eve is “laying the table”, which involves putting out a rediculous amount of food so that your guests can come over, stay for 5 minutes, not eat any of it, drink a toast and leave. More on that later. I had every intention of only putting out some American candy and liquor and inviting a select few guests, but my host Mom would have none of it and forced me to decorate my entire room for all the “guests” that would come over. Alex and I had a really nice table for New Years.

New Years Day – At 10am the next day, I awoke and the debouchery began. 10 hours later, 24 neighbors’ houses later, 34lbs of dolma later, I slumped down in a chair at Alex’s host family’s house to finally relax. I had literally been eating ALL DAY (think, sitting at the Chinese buffet for 10 hours), completely drained. Alex’s host family came home, and of course layed us a beautiful table to indulge. After picking at some food, Alex’s host mom turned to me and said, “Mi ker”, or “don’t eat”. I turned to her with a stunned look of amazment, having never heard those words from an Armenian’s mouth before. After questioning her about it, she laughed and said, “Not ‘Mi ker’, ‘Mirk ker’,” or “eat fruit”. To me, this sums up Nor Tari 100%.

Minchev Verch – I spent the next few days visiting my host family in Bazum from this summer, which is best described as Thanksgiving on speed, or a progressive from Hell. I arrived at my family’s house at 5. By 5:05, they had told me to set my bag down, thrown me into an 1980s Suburban, and we started our 7-house crawl around Bazum and Vanadzor. Each place was literally walk in, eat 3 dolma, tell the host that “these are the best dolma I’ve had yet” (because they all ask), and drink three shots of vodka minchev verch (“until finished”) with the same three toasts you’ve heard at every other house. The same continued for Jan 3rd, 4th, and 5th, and I finally decided to escape the busy city life and spend the last few days in my host cousins’ village of Terut.

Terut – The village, as you may remember, is my personal Garden of Eden. Completely beautiful, relaxing and serene, I go there to collect my thoughts, reflect on my service and generally reestablish my sense of peace with the world. Not this time. The Nor Tari tradition trancends place and time, and we continued the celebrations like clockwork in the village. We actually did get the chance to go hiking, stop by church, but this was in between a lot of eating, dancing, and my favorite part of the week: eating bar-b-qued pig tail and tongue:

I know this doesn’t begin to capture the craziness of Nor Tari. I don’t know if I really can in words, so you’re just going to have to come see it for yourself. It’s fun. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to eat dolma again for another month or two. Oh, and I dressed up as Santa’s Granddaughter, “Dzinanushik”, for our Art School party. At least there was something redeeming about the week:

5 days later, it’s almost time to relax. Until next year, of course… ay kes ban!

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